It felt so terribly like home
by Cordelia Von Trapp
Summary: Set somewhere after season 1: Ginoza has surely changed, but the old Gino still lives inside him and comes out, especially when it comes to protect the ones he loves.


When he opened the sliding door of his quarters, she was there, sitting cross-legged on the couch, typing on her laptop, Dime sleeping next to her, with its tail gently brushing her knees.

He felt the usual surge of warmth grow in his chest: it felt so terribly like home to have her around that it sort of ached inside when his duty compelled him to remember that it was wrong, that it shouldn't be like that, that it needed to end. They belonged to different worlds now.

It had started gradually: at first she just popped in sometimes after her shift, drank a cup of tea before going home. Than she'd started spending more time there, growing more and more attached to Dime and even to the potted plants spread all over his apt. She could concentrate better while there – she once told him – she wrote her reports more quickly and paperwork seemed less boring.

And there she was, once again, smiling at him while he entered.

«Tsunemori, you know that this cannot go on forever, that it needs to end, right?».

She turned her big brown eyes from the monitor to him: «Should it? Why?».

«Because you're growing too much attached to… this place, and you know it» he compelled himself to explain «You should not waste your time like this, Akane. There's a world outside waiting for you, it's unhealthy to spend all your free time in here».

«What if I'm not wasting my time? What if I don't care about the world outside, when _you_ are _in here_?» before she could even realize it, words were already spelled out.

«Tsunemori» he let out her name in a sigh, with an almost imperceptible pops' lecturing tone in it too. «There is no reason why you should care for me being inside here, really».

She could see what was going on here: Gino feeling responsible for everything, trying to protect her. The conviction he shouldn't have allowed this to happen since the very beginning gnawing at him.

«No reason uh, Gino? Lemme see… Partnership? Friendship? Love?». _Boom_.

She waited, without even breathing, for his reaction.

Silence. A thick, lingering silence that reminded her of when he was her senior inspector.

He turned his stern look towards her.

«Let _me_ see…

it's not _partnership_ : we're not colleagues, we are enforcer and inspector.

It's not _friendship_ , because I'm not your friend, I'm your dog.

And it's not _love_ either, 'cause you love Kogami, am I wrong?».

There, he said it. All the worst things put together, even that hint to Shinya. A masterpiece.

He was surprised at how naturally it had come, how he managed to pull out the old Gino once again, to scare her out of his life before it was too late.

Before she got lost like all the others.

Her big brown eyes shined with unshed tears and he felt shattered inside.

But this _needed_ to be done.

She looked so tiny and lost, more like the Akane he had met the day of their first case together, soaked to the bone under that pouring rain.

For a moment he wondered whether this could cloud her psycho pass.

«You don't know…» she tried to retort. He detected some anger in her voice. _Good_ , _it's working_.

«Yeah, and there is no need to explain it either» he blurted out.

She got up silently, he followed her movements without watching, while she started collecting her things that were randomly spread in his living room: laptop, shoes, jacket, a jumper she'd left behind god knows when… he felt like holes were being carved in his soul with each and every object she took away.

«Can I keep this?» she asked in a whisper, pointing at a cup. A pink round one with a smiling jellyfish painted on it that she always used for her tea. Gino didn't even know why he owned such a silly shaped thing.

He nodded.

«Thank you» she murmured and then she was gone, the sliding door automatically closing behind her.

He sank like an empty sack on the couch and laid there, staring blankly at the ceiling, his cyborg arm on his forehead felt like ice.

And then he thought of his father. He'd spent most of his life blaming him, lulling himself in the resentment for what he had done, reviving all the pain his decision to leave had caused to mum and to himself and so fuelling the hatred he compelled himself to feel towards him. Not a single moment he had devoted to consider what it must have been like on the other side. How lonely, and empty, and cold, and crushed inside old Masaoka must have felt when he had to leave his wife and son behind and found himself with no home anymore.

Now he knew.


End file.
